Book contents
- Christianity and Human Rights Reconsidered
- Human Rights in History
- Christianity and Human Rights Reconsidered
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I General Reflections
- Part II European Catholicism and Human Rights
- 3 Explaining the Catholic Turn to Rights in the 1930s
- 4 Catholic Social Doctrine and Human Rights
- 5 Radical Orthodoxy and the Rebirth of Christian Opposition to Human Rights
- 6 The Biopolitics of Dignity
- Part III American Protestant Trajectories
- Part IV Beyond Europe and North America
- Index
5 - Radical Orthodoxy and the Rebirth of Christian Opposition to Human Rights
from Part II - European Catholicism and Human Rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2020
- Christianity and Human Rights Reconsidered
- Human Rights in History
- Christianity and Human Rights Reconsidered
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I General Reflections
- Part II European Catholicism and Human Rights
- 3 Explaining the Catholic Turn to Rights in the 1930s
- 4 Catholic Social Doctrine and Human Rights
- 5 Radical Orthodoxy and the Rebirth of Christian Opposition to Human Rights
- 6 The Biopolitics of Dignity
- Part III American Protestant Trajectories
- Part IV Beyond Europe and North America
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores one of the most important recent Christian critiques of human rights. It uncovers how a group of British and North American theologians, who gathered under the title of “radical orthodoxy,” has claimed that modern human rights laws, and religious liberty in particular, have done great damage to Christianity and should be abandoned. This chapter shows how this line of argument, which has also been embraced by several progressive scholars, has complicated roots. It argues that the origins of radical orthodoxy’s claims lay in reactionary Catholic opposition to religious liberty, and in particular, in the belief that religious freedom was a Protestant conspiracy to eradicate Christianity from the public sphere. This chapter then shows how the writings of radical orthodoxy’s leading figures, John Milbank and William Cavanaugh, resurrected these confessional polemics in their attacks on religious liberty. It then concludes by reflecting on the potential meanings of this genealogy to recent critiques of religious freedom more broadly.
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- Information
- Christianity and Human Rights Reconsidered , pp. 103 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020